Work Text:
Hu Tao is sprawled out like a starfish on the shore, not a care in the world. There's sand in her hair, and she can feel the grains between her fingers and toes. The sun is warm on her skin, and the breeze is cool on her face.
"Hu Tao."
Hu Tao lazily peels a single eye open. Yanfei stands just a short distance away on the beach. The half-adeptus has her hands folded behind her back.
"Yanfei," Hu Tao slurs. She rolls over onto her stomach. "Come on. The sun's super nice today." She melts right back into the sand like a contented cat.
Yanfei snorts. "You're going to be digging sand out of your hair for the rest of the year if you keep that up."
"I can just make myself a new body." Hu Tao hums.
"And I don't have that privilege." But Yanfei comes over to sit cross-legged on the sand next to Hu Tao anyway. Hu Tao drags herself over to press her cheek against the side of Yanfei's thigh. If she were a cat, she'd probably be purring.
Yanfei reaches down to run her fingers through Hu Tao's hair, and Hu Tao makes a happy trilling noise.
"Have you talked to Zhongli-nushi yet?" Yanfei says. She scratches her nails lightly on Hu Tao's scalp and tries to brush sand out of her girlfriend's hair.
Hu Tao melts into Yanfei's touch. "Nah." She hums. "She'll tell me when she wants to host her funeral."
Yanfei snorts. "I was talking about who was going to inherit the funeral parlor."
"Little Hu then, probably. That family ran the place for generations before Zhongli came into the direction."
"You don't want it?"
"Blegh." Hu Tao sticks her tongue out. "Responsibility." She rolls over onto her back, falling back onto the sand. "Stop talking to me about work." She whines. "I'm on break right now." She tugs lightly at Yanfei's sleeve, and Yanfei laughs. The half-adeptus allows herself to be pulled down. Yanfei lays down beside her, resting her head against Hu Tao's stomach.
They make for an idyllic image, lying here on the beach like this. The two girls lay on the sand soaking in the sunlight. The water here is mixed with the snow-melt from Dragonspine; the waves are cold on Hu Tao's legs.
"We should go fishing." Hu Tao absentmindedly says after a few moments. She lets her eyes fall shut again; the sun's light is bright to the point of blinding.
"I think the waters here are a bit to shallow for that."
"Shell hunting, then." Hu Tao snickers. "There's bound to be all sorts of little critters we can bring back."
Yanfei hums. "So long as you don't go scaring Zhongli-nushi again." Hu Tao makes a pfft sound. Yanfei just sighs and sits back up again. She reaches a hand down. Hu Tao takes it and pulls herself back up to her feet.
Yaoguang shoal is absolutely chock full of Liyue's signature starconches. Hu Tao grabs their picnic basket. Uncaring of the sand, she starts picking out a medley of colored shells and placing them at the bottom of the basket. Yanfei easily trails after her along the shore, occasionally reaching over to add her own shells to the pile.
"Maybe we could make something with these shells later." Yanfei absently says.
Hu Tao adds yet another starconch to her collection. "Starconches have alchemical properties, if that's what you're saying."
Yanfei snorts. "I was talking about like, a shell painting or something."
"That works too." Hu Tao says easily. "I could make a giant one and stick it in the front hall of the parlor."
"I don't think we have enough shells to cover that entire wall." Yanfei laughs easily. She bends down and flips over a rock. She turns it around in her hand.
"Let a girl dream." Hu Tao pouts. She turns around to stare at the stone Yanfei is scrutinizing. "What's that?"
"A fossil, I think." Yanfei wanders a short distance away from the shoreline towards a patch of rocks. Hu Tao loyally trails after her, the basket of shells swinging in her hands.
She peers down over Yanfei's when Yanfei crouches down by the rocks and begins hitting the rock against the stones. When she finally manages to split the geode open, she holds up half of the stone up towards Hu Tao.
Hu Tao blinks down at it. "I have no idea what that is." She can tell that it's a fossil, but to her eyes it just looks like a lump in a rock.
"Really?" Yanfei turns the open geode towards herself. "It's a coral fossil. They're pretty common. With your age…"
Hu Tao clicks her tongue, pouting. "In my defense, I spent the majority of my life in the mountains."
Yanfei laughs. She climbs back to her feet and drops the fossil in their basket of trinkets. She's still smiling when she turns her gaze towards Hu Tao. Hu Tao meets her gaze; it's a warm expression. Hu Tao wants to bask in it.
"Is that basket not heavy?" Yanfei asks.
Hu Tao sniffs. "Not for me." As if to show off, she swings the basket back and forth. The sea shells and the singular fossil rattle with the motion. She raises her head to glance up at the sky. The sun is still bearing down on their heads; they still have quite some time left in the day.
"Ooh." Hu Tao perks up. "Why don't we do portraits? Of all of our friends."
Yanfei raises an eyebrow. She reaches forward to take the basket from Hu Tao. "Do we have enough shells for that?"
"Small ones." Hu Tao amends.
Yanfei laughs at that. She leans forward and presses a quick kiss to Hu Tao's lips, then takes her girlfriend by the wrist and drags her back towards the waterline.
"We'll need to find some more shells then." She says. "Maybe we'll be able to make something that even Zhongli-nushi will be impressed by."
Zhongli's office gains a new art piece over the weekend. It's a small mosaic made of sea shells, both fragments and whole pieces. Whoever put the piece together had tried to make a portrait of Zhongli-nushi, but had only marginally succeeded. If one squints closely, they can just barely make out the outline of a human form. Otherwise, it just looks like a peach-toned multicolored blob.
Zhongli leaves the framed mosaic on a counter in his office anyway.